The movies about a lonely awkward guy who falls in love with his favorite xxx
porn star. He meets her and is thrown into a world of scumbags, drug addicts,
porn stars and serial killers. There is a story to AFSL but it is a character
study movie.

Well the main inspiration was to make a movie with little money. Something
realistic that I could shoot. Meaning no explosions, big stars, or cameras
that have a whole crew to run them. It started as a faux documentary about
serial killers. Kind of like a forensic file show or something like that. I
was gonna do interviews with victims, friends of the killers, detectives, etc.
Then there would be this actual footage the killers filmed themselves in the
documentary. I also played around with the idea of just showing the movie from
the killers cameras but I was more interested in making a movie not a faux
snuff film. When I was putting it together it became more of a narrative
exploitation movie. It sounded a lot more fun to me to shoot it that way.

In terms of violence, A Few
Screws Loose almost goes over the top. Your take on the violence in
your film?

I have been in the make-up fx business for over 10 years now so it's no
surprise I like bloody movies. I always wanted more blood! So yeah its over
the top and I think its still disturbing even though I didn't have much time
and budget to make everything look ultra realistic. I figured I could shoot
stuff just right and not show some of the bad fx but I figured that's what
most horror fans love about low budget horror films in the first place so I'll
show everything! And I knew it would bug the hell out of people who stick to
all those Hollywood rules of film making.

The full-on gore effects in your film immediately reminded me of
Herschell Gordon Lewis' gore films [Herschell
Gordon Lewis bio - click here] in
terms of bluntness. Are you happy with that comparison?

A few
words about that girl gang featured in A Few
Screws Loose and the girls' wonderful outfits?

The
girl gang was a bigger part of the story but shooting the movie had
difficulties that kinda pushed them to the back burner. There was more of
a connection with the female lead Ember and the girl gang. It's a long
story, I shot the female lead Ember twice! The first actress who did the
part thought she was so awesome that she started making crazy
demands and since she never finished shooting the scenes she was supposed
to in the first place I just decided to re-shoot her whole character. I
started from scratch and did it all over again with a new actress. It only
set me back about six months. A huge pain in the ass but it was worth it
so I didn't have to be held hostage by an artistic terrorist! (Ha ha) I
designed the costumes with a friend, Ann Martella, and she sewed them for a
really sweet deal!

Los Angeles' porn industry
features heavily in A
Few Screws Loose. Why, and your take on the local porn industry and
porn as such?

The porno thing came along with the faux
snuff thing. I wanted the killers to have a good reason for having their
cameras rolling all the time. Porn was a good world to set a faux real
footage movie in. Also pretty much everyone has seen one so I figured it
would be a cool way to make the footage seem real. A lot of porn these
days is the gonzo thing. They want the viewers to think this is real sex.
No scripts. Just this scenario of some hot horny girl who loves sex but
it's fake. Fake reality but there is a hand held camera look to it that
makes it feel natural even though the girl is getting paid. The sex is
real so you don't feel like your watching a movie, it's just
people fucking. It's real!

As far as the porno industry? It's just like any other industry! All walks
of life work in the industry. I have a few friends that have worked in
porno. There are some creepy people and there are some good professional
people. The characters in my movie are almost wanna-be porn stars. They
are losers. I'm in no way knocking porn but if you have ever watched any
there is no doubt that some of the dudes in porn are creepy bastards. I
didn't do research on it but I'm willing to bet there are stories similar
to mine out there!

Jack Spralja

Randy Tobin

A few words about your main cast and crew?

Randy
Tobin is an up and coming actor. He was in The American Poop Movie most
recently and I predict he will be a big star soon! Randy is a pleasure to
work with. He's always ready to make a movie! He understands the
difficulties of shooting low budget films and never gave me a hard time
with the crazy schedules that come with the filming. Jack Spralja
sings for a well known punk band The Underground Railroad to Candyland.
Chase Monroe has a part in a movie called Callback available now. Everyone
in AFSL was great!

As far as the crew goes, it was usually
really small. Some days I had an extra camera man, make-up artist and/or
PAs here and there. Usually I was the crew.

How
easy/difficult was it to get actors and especially actresses to appear in a film as based on sex
and violence as yours?

It wasn't hard at all! I was upfront
about the content and the type of movie I wanted to make. There is no
actual pornography in AFSL so most of the actors were excited to act and
make it feel real. The hard part comes on the fourth or fifth day of
shooting on a weekend movie shoot: People loose momentum or realize how
low budget the movie is! They might do some extra work on Melrose
Place or something and consider you a joke after that. That's the downside
of being an independent movie maker in Los Angeles. People want their
bragging rights about how awesome it is being on set. So some of the LA
actors are a big pain in the ass, they don't wanna work for anything. It's
this attitude like I'm good looking, I should be famous!

I'm releasing AFSL
myself. It will be for sale on afewscrewsloosemovie.com
early in the new year. I'm getting all the artwork and details taken care
of as we speak. Hopefully some other websites will pick it up and sell it
on their sites? It's coming early 2010 for sure!

It
will be as gory! Some of the kills are not as over-the-top and it's a lot
more disturbing. There has already been 5 gallons of blood used so it's
gonna be bloody!

Leaving
the present behind for the moment: You have started out in the special
makeup department. Would you like to talk about that aspect of your
career, and some of your work you are really proud of?

I
worked on Buffy the
Vampire Slayer the TV show for about four years. It
was non-stop crazy work so it took some stamina to get stuff done! I
handled two features on my own, Killer Shrimps and Saint
Francis. I
was foam latex supervisor for Gabe Bartalos' shop on Mathew Barneys
Cremaster 3. I have done work for artist Christian Jankowski. And I would
have to mention the work for my current employers, artists Paul and Damon
McCarthy - to be involved with their films and art is something I'm proud
of!

What
made you to go into directing, and did you take any filmmaking classes?

I
have always wanted to make movies. In the eighties when camcorders came
around my friends and I would rent them from the local video store and
make movies on the weekends. When they became more accessible some friends
parents had them and we started making all kinds of little movies. We made
a trilogy of slasher films, a zombie film, a scarface film. We even ripped
off Rolling Thunder! We changed it a bit but still had the garbage
disposal scene but it was one of the bad guys. We didn't have any idea to
make the hook arm. They are pretty crazy! A bunch of twelve year olds
running around swearing like sailors with bags of sugar as cocaine. So I
have kinda always been doing it!

A Few
Screws Loose was your debut feature as a director. Did you direct
anything before that?

I directed two short films. Nutcase,
a zombie movie, and John's Reality, a Vietnam vet revenge story. They are
about 15 minutes long each. They both showed at galleries around Los
Angeles. Nutcase was even in a group art show with artist Jason Rhodes.

Well Tom Savini, Gabe Bartalos, and Screaming
Mad George are guys who are responsible for me getting into the business
and I look up to these guys for sure! As far as guys who taught me skills
and put me under their wing so to speak I gotta give a shout out to Robert
Lan, Gary Yee, Damien Fisher, Michael S. Pack, Gerry Gergely, and Mark
Garbarino for being great guys and sharing their knowledge. These guys are
major ass kickers in the FX world and I'm glad to have worked, learned and
became friends with these guys!

Any future projects you'd like to talk about?

For
now I'm focused on The Los Angeles Ripper. I have some ideas for my next
movie but I can't say for sure until The Los Angeles Ripper is done!
A Few
Screws Loose and The Los Angeles Ripper are part of my serial killer
trilogy. I would like to remake AFSL with a nice budget. I would like to
tell the story of the gang girls and really show how the story was
supposed to be told. Some of it got lost in low budget movie making
craziness and I had to move on.

There
are so many! Lately The Pusher-trilogy blew me away! District 9 was great!
The original Dawn of the
Dead, Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Bad
Taste, Slap Shot, The Boys Next Door, Bully,
The Zebra Killer, Gummo, Ratcatcher, Chopper,
The Warriors, Snuff Trap
and A Clockwork Orange to
name a few. I like all kinds of movies but I'm usually watching something
disturbing or just really bad movies - maybe that's why my movies turn out
the way they do!

And
of course, films you really deplored?

Again there are so
many! That Mummy movie with Brendan Fraser comes to mind! I didn't care
for Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. The Dead Hate the
Living? Crap
like that I don't care for. Some of the remakes are too easy to bash but
some of them are okay.

Anything else I have
forgotten to ask and you are just dying to mention?